


decisive

by notavodkashot



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eternatus!Leon - Freeform, Fugue, M/M, Piers is not having a good day, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: There is a moment, in every person’s life, that they must come clean about themselves.
Relationships: Dande | Leon/Nezu | Piers
Comments: 12
Kudos: 27





	decisive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Juleatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juleatic/gifts).



There is a moment, in every person’s life, that they must come clean about themselves. 

A singular fragment of time, suspended in the tempestuous come and go of their banal existence, when everyone must stand there, alone, awash in themselves, choking in every tiny choice and consequence, deeply, profoundly sure of who they are, and they must come through and unveil themselves. There is no option but to reach in deep, fingers grasping, spasming, clutching tight at the pulsing, feverish truth they carry in their chest, whatever it is that lights the fire keeping their heart beating, their lungs breathing. 

There is a moment, in every person’s life, that they must by necessity, stand before the mirror, naked beyond their own skin, truth woven in sinew and sin plated in layers around bone, and there is nothing left then, but to give that step, take that leap, endure the great horror of testing all that mettle one spends all their life hoarding. 

When Piers was nineteen years old, stupid and dumb like a boy of fifteen, he thought he’d reached his moment: the earth opened up, cracked right up the middle, like ribs snapping in sequence, flourishing like the deadliest of blooms, and then sea rose up, roaring in silence as it swallowed up the offered boon. He’s spent ten years hearing the sound of ground tearing apart in lieu of screams when he closes his eyes, living with the haunting certainty he probably shouldn’t be there. None of them should. Spikemuth should have been gone, should have vanished into nothing at all, but they didn’t. He didn’t. 

He always thought, with that cynical optimism he can’t help but blame on himself, that he’d already stumbled through that test, though no word on whether that had been a success or not. He was done. He knew himself, in and out, and that’s why he could go on, immune to the whispers and gossip and every callous judgment thrown his way. He knew himself, had tested himself, iron hammered true by sheer tectonic force. 

And yet. 

“It’s okay,” Piers says, closing the door behind him, arms neatly folded behind his back, tongue clicking as if that could disguise the click of the lock sliding in place. “It’s just me.” 

It shouldn’t have been so easy, to sneak into the Champion’s room. He is the Hero of Galar, after all, the one who tamed the untamable. Their savior. They should be guarding him more, Piers thinks, not just letting someone like him sneak by without stopping him to even ask what he thought he was doing there. Maybe if someone had stopped him along the way, he’d been forced to vomit the maelstrom of poison boiling under his tongue, force each terrible idea into tiny, cramped words, and then maybe he would not be here at all. Maybe someone would have told him he’s crazy and wrong and that he must be stopped. Maybe someone would realize the truth and he wouldn’t have to do this on his own. Maybe. 

“You’re shaking,” Leon’s mouth and Leon’s tongue and Leon’s teeth, they all work together, pushing air through his throat and coax his voice into the room, vowels slurred in a good facsimile of the drugs they put into the hanging bag – four broken ribs and eight hairline fractures in bones Piers hadn’t known existed, much less had names of their own, yesterday – when they moved him in. “Piers.” 

He looks fine, it’s the thing. He’s not splintered ground and black water, swirling like the inelegant flush of the faulty toilet in his apartment. He looks fine: Leon’s hair and Leon’s eyes and Leon’s lips and Leon’s limbs, all carefully arranged on the bed, tubes and knickknacks stashed all around to properly set the scene, like Marnie used to do before putting her dolls to sleep. 

Piers doesn’t hurl, mostly because he hasn’t eaten in two days, but also, he hopes, because he’s still got a shade of principle left. Resilient, his Ma used to say, walking down main street with the swagger of ownership and command. Come hell or high water, they remain. She didn’t, of course, and neither did main street, after Spikemuth collapsed and all Piers could do was put up a replica made of papier-mâché, hollowed out all the way to the bone, without the sturdy roots that were torn off anyway. He’s not, he thinks, resilient. Stubborn, maybe. Desperate, more like. 

Please, Piers does not say, even though it bubbles up angrily up against the roof of his mouth, like the stupid bubbles in Leon’s favorite champagne. Give him back, he does not beg, because he’s never known how that’s supposed to work, he’s only ever known to take what he needs, dig in his fingers and refuse to let go. Give him back. 

“You can stop, you know?” Piers says instead, eyes narrowed, smile meanspirited, because everything about him is mean and spirited and Leon always knew how to redefine terms in ways that made Piers laugh. Always. “Pretending, I mean,” he goes on, slouching back against the door, hands still out of sight, because there’s a part of him that still needs to pretend the pocket knife with the dull edges that he’s kept only to fidget with somewhere Leon might see, that it can do anything at all. “I can tell.” 

“Ah,” Leon’s mouth and Leon’s lips and Leon’s tongue reply, still in unison, still trying their best, but the sound is different, crystalline, and somehow Piers doesn’t hurl even if it digs like fishing hooks into his ears, making the whole world tilt off axis and wobble unsteadily like a worn out vinyl on the turntable. “You wish to barter for him.” 

“I wish you to fuck right off, honestly,” Piers replies, so far past fear, past rage, he wonders if he’s dreaming, has been dreaming since that day, and he’s been lying down at the bottom of the sea, asleep with his eyes wide open, pretending he didn’t die then, attempting to die yet again. “But you won’t.” 

“I will not, no,” says the thing that is not Leon, that has so convincingly pretended to be Leon, whose shadow lingers on the wall, hissing a breath like a snort, amused, despite the misshapen shards of a skeleton poorly put together by an unsteady hand painted awkwardly on the pristine plaster of the walls, even though there’s no light to cast it in the first place. “Still. No one has bartered with me for anything in so very long…” Leon’s smile digs into Piers’ navel and then twists, like a proper gutting knife, carving him up to his throat. “You used to sing to me, didn’t you? Before.” 

There is a moment, in every person’s life, that they must come clean about who they are, who they _truly_ are, deep down, and skin deep, and all those nooks and crannies in between. 

Piers opens his eyes, wide, wider still, and then leaps. 

Leaps. 

Before Leon, he reminds himself, he did just fine without anyone there to catch him. Maybe he still knows how. 

Maybe. 

Maybe not. 


End file.
